A History of the Wife

How did marriage, considered a religious duty in medieval Europe, become associated with romantic love? If the original purpose of marriage was procreation, what does it mean for women today? In this social, legal, and cultural history of women and matrimony in the Judeo-Christian world, cultural historian Marilyn Yalom charts the evolution of marriage through the ages, and shows how radically our ideas have changed.

A History of the Wife is a study of laws, religious practices, social customs, economic patterns, and political consciousness that have affected generations of wives. Yalom also discusses women who have rebelled against the matrimonial conventions of their times, including Marjorie Kempe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger. This gripping historical analysis of marriage sheds new light on an institution most people take for granted, and one that is experiencing its most convulsive upheaval since the Reformation.

Marilyn Yalom is a senior scholar at the Institute for Women and Gender at Stanford University. She is the author of A History of the Breast; Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory; and Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness.

"The first truly comprehensive history of the female spousal experience ... There are precious few views of marriage or the family to which this book can be compared." -- Library Journal